16: the Tower

July 1, 2015

Tragedy strikes out of a clear blue sky.

What mythic event or object the traditional Tower is depicting is pretty vague, but we can fill it in with a lot of stuff. My favorite is to link it with the Christian myth of the Tower of Babylon. Which makes the reference to 9/11 in this version even more complicated; how much of the aftermath of that turned into finger-pointing and blaming, while the real causes continued unabated? (What’s *your* money doing behind your back?)

After the crisis, after the tragedy, there are probably better things to do than to sit around blaming each other. It doesn’t matter whose fault it is; what matters is that you’re falling. Got anything better to do than curl in a ball and brace for impact? If you can distract yourself at the crucial moment, maybe you can miss the ground and fly.

Are these three people falling the ones we saw before as the Lovers? Is the black figure Justice? Are the paired towers one tower split in two, is this another card with a subtle false dualism message? Is the figure in red taking the traditional pose of the Hanged Traitor?

Meanwhile, in more metaphorical realms, this image suggests things breaking down and crumbling. Long-held beliefs, vast structures of (false?) reasoning, can be destroyed with the right payload delivered at the proper angle. What’s come in under your radar lately that’s got you teetering on the edge of collapse – or should you be flying in the grass on your way below someone else’s defenses? Whichever way things are going, it’s going to be messy. Papers and ash everywhere. Pick yourself up and look around when the conflagration’s over: do you *really* want to get involved in an endless war in the desert?